MANDEVILLE, Manchester — There is growing concern that illegal parties and other forms of indiscipline are fuelling a continuing surge of COVID-19 cases in the central Jamaica parish.

Acting medical officer of health, Dr Shonette Blair-Walters, told the Jamaica Observer that the Health Department has received reports of illegal parties taking place in communities now experiencing an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases.

The situation took another twist on Tuesday with confirmation that the Belair High School in Mandeville had suspended face-to-face classes pending the test result for a student with COVID-19-like symptoms.

Manchester recorded 125 new COVID-19 cases spread across 40 communities between January 10 and 24.

The surge has resulted in tighter measures for a period of two weeks ending Monday, February 8. There is a daily curfew from 7:00 pm to 5:00 am, with public gatherings reduced to 10 people.

Up to press time yesterday, the number of active cases in the parish had increased to 183 from 50 on January 14. The parish has recorded 970 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 36 deaths, since the first cases was found.

Blair-Walters argued that people’s behaviour is having a direct impact on the increase in cases.

“The rise in the number of cases is not an accident. Whenever we are not following the protocols recommended by the Ministry of Health, we have seen an increase in the numbers.

“In the areas where we are seeing an increase, people have reported not just to us in the Health Department, but to the municipal corporation that there have been illegal parties with large number of persons gathered, many times without any physical distancing and there is an absence of mask-wearing in many of the situations,” said Blair-Walters.

“We tend to have large families and we live in large groups in the parish, so when one person is positive many times the other members of the family become positive too,” she added

Blair-Walters said community testing had recently taken place in Grey Ground, New Green, Dunbar and Allison.

In the meantime head of the Manchester police division, Superintendent Gary Francis, told the Observer that cops remain committed to enforcing the Disaster Risk Management Act with “people who are deviant being prosecuted.”

Regarding the situation at Belair High, Principal Lawrence Rowe said: “We have temporarily suspended face-to-face classes at Belair due to a suspected case of COVID-19. We don’t have the result as yet, but we have decided to close the doors to physical classes for the time being until we can ascertain the result.”

He said the physical classes were for the students preparing to sit regional examinations.

Rowe added that the school will remain closed until Friday.